Inuit Environmental Science for Healthy Inuit Futures

• In Event: 34.073 - Stewardship of the Land, Water, and Ice: Implications for Education in Nunangat

Abstract

Objectives: In February of 2017, the Land Survival and Culture team of Kativik Ilisarniliriniq, was tasked with creating an Inuit Environmental Science (IES) course that will be incorporated into the Secondary Four and Five curriculum across Nunavik. We are building a program that is grounded in Inuit language, culture and land knowledge. This course also covers many of the science competencies (in English or French) for the Quebec Board of Education Science and Technology Cycle One and Two and Environmental Science and Technology Progressions of Learning. While it has been exciting to dream about how to pair Inuit skills with the necessary scientific language for the Quebec requirements, there have been interesting challenges in addressing the need to not subordinate one knowledge system to the other. In some instances, Western science is only recently learning to articulate what Inuit know about Arctic life and ecosystems. We will share examples of such challenges and others, that we experienced in the process of the joint development of the curriculum in this presentation.
Theoretical Grounding: Our approach has been informed, in part, by the principles of a Critical Pedagogy of Place (Gruenewald, 2003). Other noted scholars that inspired our work are, Ray Barnhardt and his co-creator Oscar Angakok Kawagley, (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005), Cynthia Chambers (2006, 2008), Mi’kmaq scholar Marie Battiste (1998, 2000) and Papasechase and Cree scholar Dwayne Donald (2009).
Methods & Results: In collaboration with local knowledge holders, Community and University partners, and NGO’s, we are constructing hands-on learning experiences on the land and in the classroom to build scientific competencies matched with Inuit ways of knowing. Inuit youth can use these skills to make good choices about healthy futures in the North or the South, as providers of country food for their families and communities, and as decision makers, as more industry and natural resource extraction impacts lands and waters in the North.
Implications: This is a critical moment in Nunavik: Serious concerns about culture and language preservation, climate change, and about educational attainment for Inuit youth have been shared by many groups, from Elders to parents to the youth themselves. In 1992, in the report entitled Silatunirmut, the creators wrote: “We need an education system that combines the best of our own heritage and traditions with the best of other cultures, a system that respects and builds on the isumak of our grandparents and the wisdom of elders who understand learning and institutions, wherever they can be found” (p.3), goals we still strive to meet today. Inuit across the Nunangat are calling for an Inuit education to address language learning, strong environmental protections, and completion of their education (Berger, 2008; Simon, 2017). Life and land are changing very quickly in the Arctic: the IES program centers land and place and will equip Inuit youth with the cultural and academic competencies to meet these changes with innovation, respect, advocacy and generosity, all characteristics of Inuit and Inuit ways of being.

Authors

• Alexa Scully, Lakehead University

• Christopher Murray, Lakehead University